On the doorstep
by cedricsowner
Summary: The case of a stalking victim causes Rossi to take a good look at himself. A lot darker than my first one. Mind the rating, there's some strong language in it.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.

On the doorstep

_Modern psychology confirms what Indian sages already knew thousands of years ago: What we do to others influences ourselves much more than anything others do to us. _

Morgan had seen the woman before, back in the hotel. She had caught his attention because she had looked totally out of place in the shiny lobby: Her unhealthily skinny figure, ten-years-out-of-fashion clothes, ghostly white complexion and shockingly dark shadows under her eyes had made her appear like a complete wreck, probably addicted to something. To his surprise the manager had been very friendly to her. His body language had displayed nothing but respect. They had shaken hands and he had thanked her for something.

Now she was crossing the parking lot where Morgan was loading his car after a weekend of rest and recovery in Las Vegas. He couldn't help but watch. The way she moved between the parked cars was too strange not to notice. She didn't simply walk to her car – she practically crept up on it as if she was planning to ambush the vehicle. With a swiftness and quietness that betrayed regular practice she zigzagged her way towards it, throwing reassuring glances over her shoulder every few seconds. Finally having reached the automobile she hectically tore open the driver's door and was about to jump in when something stopped her dead in her tracks. Hands pressed to her mouth to suppress a scream, she stumbled backwards against the car parked next to hers and sank to the ground. Morgan was with her in a second.

"Hey, are you okay?", he asked. Stupid question, obviously she wasn't. He looked into the car, trying to establish what had terrified her so much. Judging from her reaction, he expected nothing less than a beheaded corpse. He found zilch. Puzzled, he turned to the shaking bundle on the ground.

"The pillow…", she choked. "The pillow…" On the driver's seat was a large blue pillow. It looked totally unobtrusive. Still mystified, Morgan took it out of the car and held it towards her. She shrank away. "I don't like blue…", she whispered.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.

It took some maneuvering but after a couple of minutes Morgan had managed to steer her into the hotel bar where he bought her a drink. She took in half the liquid with one swallow, but at least it calmed her down a little. "I'm sorry", she said. "I must seem like a total crackpot to you." Morgan decided not to comment on that. She was obviously a woman with severe mental problems and he was not sure what to do with her. "Some people don't like heights, others are scared of enclosed spaces, I don't like blue color", she explained.

"Then what was a blue pillow doing on your driver's seat?", Morgan asked the obvious.

She shrugged her shoulders and emptied the glass. "I guess it's called stalking. Someone places blue things wherever I go. I know it sounds ridiculous…" She seemed surprisingly stable now, compared to the state of mind she had been in only a few minutes ago. "…but it scares the daylights out of me. Anyway, thanks for your help. My name is Jamie Talbot." She held a hand out to him. The change she had undergone in the past few moments was remarkable. She talked like a normal person. Only she didn't look like one.

Maybe it were her eyes that kept Morgan from retreating now that she was feeling better. They were like two crystal clear dark lakes. Not the eyes of a person who had lost her mind over too many drinks or other toxic substances. She was obviously used to heavy drinking, but seeing her from up close she didn't come across as an addict. Her outer shield was badly damaged, but from underneath a keen mind was looking at him. "Tell me about the stalker", he requested.

Jamie shook her head and a few more strands of dark hair loosened from her disheveled ponytail. "Why do you care? You were loading your car when I interrupted you. Surely you should be on your way home by now."

"Stalking is a serious crime. It influences the victims deeply. You seem to me like someone who has suffered a lot."

She smiled sadly. "No, I looked like that even before the stalking stuff began. Ever since I finished high school I'm on the move, never staying anywhere for long. I'm a travelling art expert, you know." Seeing Morgan's surprised expression, she broke into a wider smile. "I know I don't look like that. And I don't write pompous certificates of genuineness. I don't even have a college degree – couldn't stay in one place long enough. But I'm very good at looking at things and my customers value that."

"When did the stalking start?", Morgan wanted to know. She told him that two years after she had began travelling an unwanted blue item had appeared in her life for the first time: A blue toy elephant. It had been left for her at the counter of the youth hostel where she had been staying.

"Perfect timing", she said. "I was just about to come back on track. Thought about enrolling for college after all. Was even considering a therapy to curb my unrest. And then…"

Morgan pitied her. He felt that under all this wreckage a clever, intelligent person was hiding, too afraid to come out. It was definitely a crime, scaring people so much that they degenerated into mere shadows of what they could have been. "I might be able to help you", he told her. "I work for a special FBI unit, the BAU – Behavioral Analysis Unit, formerly the BSU – Behavioral Science Unit. We profile criminal offenders and have a lot of experience with stalkers. I can talk to my team…"

"That sounds… good…", Jamie replied reluctantly, her voice suddenly small. "Will you excuse me for a moment? I need to go to the bathroom."

15 minutes later she still wasn't back. Deeply concerned, Morgan went looking for her. He found nothing. She was gone. He rushed to the parking lot. Her car was gone, too.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.

Morgan raised hell. He called in the police, informed his teammates and told the hotel manager that he wanted access to the surveillance videos. He was granted everything, but it was all to no avail. The police found no evidence whatsoever that Jamie Talbot had left the hotel bar against her will. The surveillance tapes showed her driving away hastily in her battered Jeep, looking terrified but not forced by another person. When the rest of the team arrived early next morning, they found Morgan back in the lobby again, totally puzzled.

"Derek, what is this all about?", Hotchner demanded to know. Morgan quickly recounted the events of the evening.

Rossi shook his head, calm and self-assured as usual: "You obviously met some very disturbed woman. Probably bipolar. Most likely she placed the pillow on the driver's seat herself to gain attention. When you told her you're with the FBI she realized she got more than she asked for and buzzed off." At this moment, Morgan's cell phone rang.

"Hello, man of my dreams", Garcia purred, "I've hacked into your stalking victim's e-mail account. According to her correspondence, Jamie Talbot's next appointment with a customer is in Wilmington, Delaware – today. I checked the local hotels and found a reservation on her name. She collected her keys two hours ago."

"Thanks, Garcia…", Hotchner said, "…but this doesn't seem to be a BAU case after all."

"Excuse me, can you repeat the name?", Rossi interrupted him.

"Jamie Talbot", Garcia replied.

"That sounds familiar…", the senior agent murmured, lost in thought. "Do you have a picture of her?"

"Her driver's license photo." She transmitted the photo to Morgan's cell phone. Rossi's eyes narrowed in concentration as he looked at the small screen. Driver's license photos were never becoming, but this one would have qualified as an advertisement for Blair Witch Project part three.

"That can't be the same person. She looks awful. What in the world has happened to her?"

"You know her?", Hotchner asked, but Rossi ignored him.

"Garcia, do you have her date of birth? Which high school did she go to?" Seconds later, Garcia rattled off Jamie Talbot's biographical data.

"So you know her?", Hotchner repeated his question.

Slowly the senior agent nodded. "More than a decade ago Gideon, Ryan and me investigated a serial killing at a high school in Nebraska. She was one of our suspects."


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.

Still staring at the cell phone's screen in disbelief, Rossi shook his head. "She was a teenager back then", he said "Extremely clever. Pretty girl. Perfectly mentally stable."

"Except that she fit the profile of a serial killer", Hotchner stated dryly.

The senior agent shrugged his shoulders. "We were looking for a highly intelligent, very ambitious female student in her last year, killing out of vengeance. Jamie was our chief suspect, granted, but in the end it turned out the unsub was a classmate who had planted evidence against her. What has happened to her? She was planning to go to Berkeley after high school."

"She never went to college", Morgan informed him. "She said she started travelling right after finishing school. Couldn't stay in one place long enough to attend lectures."

"She vanished after you had told her that you're with the BAU, didn't she?", Reid observed. "Maybe the old case and her current behavior are somehow connected."

"I'd really like to talk to her, Hotch", Rossi said. "Can I get a day off to go to Delaware?"

"If this is connected with an old BAU case, the matter is of interest to all of us", Hotchner decided. "We go together."

Rossi used the time on the jet for a telephone conversation with Jamie's parents. They remembered him and they affirmed an unsettling thought of his. "She was never the same after the investigation", Jeremy Talbot explained. "Turned into a truant. Walked around town for hours, just for the sake of moving, never actually going anywhere. It's not that we want to blame you, you were only doing your job, but she has suffered from nightmares ever since."

_"You were only doing your job" _– the father's words reverberated in Rossi's mind. He remembered his first encounter with Jamie: A bubbly girl, president of her school's debating society, enjoying nothing more than a fierce battle of words. She had actually looked forward to the first interview, absolutely confident that she would be able to talk herself out of everything. Didn't even want a lawyer. In order to establish whether she was the unsub or not, Gideon and him had had to break this belief into pieces. It's no picnic, being caught between two interrogation specialists – especially not when a victim is missing and time is pressing. No, they hadn't been gentle and yes, in the end she had been devastated. But Rossi had been sure she would get over it – in fact he had even felt that it had been a valuable lesson for her, curbing her overflowing ego a bit. Now he wondered whose ego really had been overflowing at that time.

They arrived in Wilmington in the middle of the night. The men and Prentiss headed straight to the hotel where Jamie was staying. JJ hadn't accompanied them since for now this wasn't an official BAU case and they wouldn't need a media liaison officer. The hotel was at the outskirts of Wilmington – a cheap place right next to one of the city's main artery roads. According to the receptionist, Jamie Talbot was in her room.

Morgan cautiously knocked on her door. "Jamie?" He didn't want to scare her. "My name is Derek Morgan. Do you remember me? We met in Vegas yesterday. I would still like to help you – could you please open the door?"

"This is probably not the best of all moments", a thin voice from inside called.

"Ms. Talbot? My name is Aaron Hotchner, unit chief of the BAU. SSA Morgan informed us about your problems and we'd like to help. At the moment we've got the impression the you're faced with great emotional stress. If you don't let us in now we might find it necessary to force the door open for the sake of your own safety", Hotchner told her.

For a long moment silence reigned. Then someone unlocked the door quietly. "Before you call in a crime scene unit", Jamie said, standing on the doorstep in ragged pajamas "the blood is all mine."


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.

In his years in the field David Rossi had seen a lot, but nevertheless the sight of Jamie Talbot with slashed arms and legs in a cheap hotel room that indeed looked as if she had killed someone in there left a permanent trace in his memory. Blood spatters covered the floor, the walls, the furniture – even the ceiling. She hadn't tried to kill herself. Her sole intention had been to hurt herself. For a moment he found himself unable to cross the doorstep.

Hotchner reached out to her, but she shrank away from his touch. "It's okay, it's okay", he whispered. "Come, take a seat on the sofa."

She was trembling from top to toe. "It'll cost me a fortune to pay for this", she choked, covering her face with her cut and still bleeding hands. "They'll probably have to renovate the room."

"Jamie. Look at me", Hotchner said, more firmly now. "Why did you do this?"

"When I arrived here, a letter was waiting for me", she explained quietly, almost whispering. "It contained nothing but pictures of dark blue sky. I screamed so loud, the manager came and asked me what was wrong. I hate myself! I'm an idiot! How can blue sky scare anyone so much? I'm a worthless piece of shit… all my life I'm running…."She started tearing at the wounds on her hands with her own fingernails.

"The only piece of shit is the monster that does this to you", Morgan stated agitatedly. "Someone is terrorizing you. And we are here to put a stop on that."

Jamie looked at him and then at Rossi who was still frozen on the doorstep. "I don't need your help", she whispered, more to herself then to anybody else.

Rossi finally managed to enter the room. He felt extremely angry – not with the poor creature huddling on the couch but with himself. She had been innocent, damn it, and he had helped condemning her to a lifelong existence on the outskirts of society, constantly fighting for simple mental stability. "Get up", he told Jamie, positioning himself in the middle of the room. She shivered at the sound of his voice. "Get up!", he repeated with more emphasis. Hotchner moved away from her, retreating to a corner so she couldn't hide behind him. "Get up!", Rossi bellowed so sharply that she finally got on her feet, shaking wildly.

Morgan wanted to interfere, but Reid placed a hand on his shoulder and restrained him. "This is important", he whispered. "A decade ago Rossi broke all her defense lines in the interview sessions, proving to her time and time again that she was inferior. This feeling has stuck – that's why she reacts so panicky to the in themselves extremely harmless blue things. She has never been able to build up her defense lines again. What David is doing now is giving her a chance to dominate."

"Tell me what you think about me", Rossi told Jamie. She only shook even more. "Tell me what you think", he said again, more intensely now, slightly spreading his arms and turning his open palms towards her.

Maybe it was this peaceful gesture that did the trick, maybe it was the fact that after all these years she finally had the chance to speak her mind. Whatever it was, suddenly her whole posture changed and became more rigid, as if she had made a decision: "I hate you", she choked.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.

"Tell me more", Rossi pressed.

"You're an arrogant bastard", she continued, her voice becoming steadier. "An arrogant bastard with at least two ex-wives – no, make that three – and no children. You think you know it all – I would put my shirt on a horse you had real trouble attuning to this team – you're reluctant to share information because you're scared someone draws cleverer conclusions than you. I'm sure you're supporting death penalty. Someone as fanatically orderly as you must believe that perpetrators of ultimate disorder should be punished ultimately." Her voice had grown loud. "And I bet you spent your free time killing beautiful animals!" She flung himself at him, crying now. "You ruined my life", she sobbed, pounding his chest with her fists. "How dare someone like you just walk in and ruin my life?" Rossi closed his arms around her and held her tight.

Hotchner marveled at the pejorative but nevertheless quite accurate profile on Rossi. "She could have been one of us", he realized, and the thought made him sad.

"Maybe we should try and clean the room", Prentiss softly told Reid. "As long as the blood is still fresh."

"Jeffrey Dahmer used bleach", the young doctor replied.

"I did you wrong and I'm sorry", Rossi said, his voice slightly unsteady. "But there's nothing I can do to undo what happened in the past. All I can do is help you sort out the mess you're in right now." She nodded silently, her forehead lightly touching his chest. Very cautiously now, he steered her back to the sofa and sat her down. "Tell me what happened after the interrogation", the elderly agent asked her.

Jamie took a deep breath. "I started having nightmares. Awful ones. Do you remember how you told me time and time again that all I had to do was open a door for the truth and admit what I had done? I hated that phrase! I sounded as if you had ripped it off some Victorian novel. And then, when you and the other agents were finally gone, I started seeing the damn thing in my dreams! Every night it comes back haunting me – a blue door. That's why I don't like blue, by the way. And that's not all! I hear voices in my sleep – voices from behind the door. A woman and a girl. They beg me to open it, scream at me at the top of their lungs, again and again!"

"Trying to flee from yourself, you started moving", Reid concluded.

Jamie nodded. "Thankfully Mom and Dad helped me out with money, otherwise I would have probably fallen by the wayside completely", she continued. "But they always supported me. They're wonderful parents. Then I met this pastor… A great man. He had almost persuaded me to go to college and undergo a therapy, but then…"

"The stalking started", Hotchner finished her sentence.

"You should go home for a few days", Rossi told her. "I know all you wish to do is run as fast as possible as far as possible, but if you ever want to get out of this vicious circle, you've got to break the pattern. Go home. There are people who love you and care for you. We'll look into this and find the bastard who makes your life so miserable."

"But what about this mess?", Jamie asked, looking around the blood-spattered room.

"Don't worry, we'll take care of it", Prentiss assured her. "Bleach works quite well."


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.

"What do you think?", Hotchner asked Rossi. They were standing in the BAU's conference room, looking at the board where they had collected what they knew about Jamie Talbot and her stalker so far.

"There aren't that many people close enough to her to know her every step. We're looking at a very limited circle of suspects: No steady boyfriends, just a one-night-stand now and then. She's got an agent who arranges meetings with customers for her, she regularly exchanges e-mails with the pastor who almost got her off the road and there's this particular client who calls her in every other week. Garcia is already collecting information about them…"

"That's not what I'm talking about", Hotchner said. "Do you really think your method of interrogation turned Jamie Talbot into the nervous wreck she is today? What does that say about our work?"

Rossi shook his head. "It cost me a night's sleep, but after all I think the interrogation was the trigger, not the cause of her problems. I'm sorry for triggering something like that, desperately sorry, but we can't be gentle all the time. A life was at stake. Maybe at least we can help her now. Let's do some dream interpretation." Her turned to Reid who had just entered the room: "What do doors mean? I know dream interpretation is not the most exact of all methods, but it's worth a try."

"Doors usually have a sexual meaning. They often represent body openings", Hotchner mused.

"Yes, but this particular door is closed and there are voices coming from behind, urging her to open it. Many dream interpreters classify blue as the color of truth, did you know that? This points to some suppressed memory", Reid explained.

"I talked to the family and the parents said that at the age of five they told Jamie that Jeremy wasn't her real father. It shocked her deeply and even in much later years she didn't want to hear a thing about that matter. She simply ignored the facts, repeating over and over again that DNA or not, Jeremy was her father and nobody else", Rossi said.

"Did she ever try to contact her real father?", Reid asked. Rossi negated that. "In this case the woman and the girl in her dreams could represent Jamie herself in various stages of her life. They might symbolize her subconsciousness, urging her to accept her descent and allow thoughts on her real father", the young doctor concluded.

"That's a lucid explanation for the dreams. Gideon and me constantly demanding the truth from her during the interrogation sessions might have prompted her mind to develop the picture of the door. But what about the stalking? Why Jamie and why in the very same moment when she was about to rebound?"

Meanwhile the other members of the team had filed into the room. "Somebody obviously enjoys scaring her", Hotchner began. "Maybe the pastor likes to be needed."

"Somebody likes her helpless", Prentiss contributed. "Maybe her agent wants to keep her dependent on him."

"Somebody likes her insane", Morgan added. "Maybe this client who calls her so often gets a kick from seeing her in mental disarray."

Rossi wanted to say something, but just then Garcia came breezing in, waving a sheet of paper excitedly. "This came in from Las Vegas PD only a moment ago. One of the cops there coincidentally stumbled over a witness who stated that he had been paid to place the blue pillow on Jamie Talbot's driver's seat."

"Sweetheart, you're the best!", Morgan exclaimed. "Who is it?"

"The witness is one of the hotel's parking attendants. He was caught with some dew and tried to save his ass with his statement."

"Yes, but _who_ _paid him_?", Rossi asked impatiently.

"The attendant was contacted via e-mail", Garcia said with a sparkle in her eyes.

"Baby girl, you can surely find out who sent the e-mail, can't you?", Morgan purred.

"I thought you might like to watch", she smiled, beckoning them to follow her into her office. "This is a piece of cake", she told them. Two minutes later they knew the stalker's identity.

"Oh no…", Reid hissed.

"I get the jet ready!", JJ shouted and rushed out of the room.

"I call the local police, you call Jamie on her mobile!", Hotchner told Rossi, who was already hectically punching numbers into his cell phone.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.

As it turned out, a snowstorm was brewing in the particular area and phone service was down so neither Jamie nor the local police could be reached. The two hours the jet took to get there seemed like an eternity to every single member of the team. Only Reid managed to concentrate on some documents Garcia had handed him in the last minute. He was deep in thought.

"Do you really think she's in danger?", JJ asked anxiously.

"I'm not sure", Rossi replied. "He has never physically threatened her. But nevertheless I'd like to be sure she's safe."

"What kind of a motive could he have for something weird like that?", she continued. Reid looked as if he wanted to say something but hesitated.

"Well, he'll have all the time in the world to explain", Morgan said grimly as the jet slowly descended through thick clouds of snow.

The woman who opened the door was utterly surprised as the FBI agents identified themselves. "Where's Jamie?", Hotchner demanded to know.

"She's upstairs", the woman stuttered. "She was tired after dinner and wanted to nap. What's the matter?" Rossi rushed upstairs, everyone filing in behind him except Reid. He stayed at the foot of the stair and asked the woman a few questions related to the documents he had read in the jet which left her even more puzzled than before.

Jamie was lying on her bed, terribly still. Rossi took her wrist. "Her pulse is hardly detectable – call an ambulance! He must have given her something!" Luckily, the main streets were already drivable again after the snow storm so that help arrived within minutes. "They'll have to pump her stomach!", the senior agent told the paramedics. "I think she was fed an overdose of sleeping pills."

"What in the world is going on here?", an elderly man with gray hair and prominent features, much older than the woman downstairs, asked. He had apparently just come home from taking the family dog for a walk.

"You tried to fake your daughter's suicide by feeding her an overdose of sleeping pills during dinner", Rossi stated flatly and beckoned Morgan to handcuff Jeremy Talbot. "What I don't know yet is why."

"I might have an answer to that", Reid said, standing on the threshold of Jamie's room. "The idea sounded so weird, I dismissed it at first. But the ground plan speaks for itself and according to Mrs. Talbot's statement…"

"What is it, Reid?", Morgan demanded to know.

Reid looked very sick, which unnerved everyone else in the team since they all knew what terrible things he had already seen. If this was worse…

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", the young doctor finally said. "We always look for deeper meanings – that's our job. But what if this time we mistook a very real picture for a symbol?"

"Reid, come to the point!", Rossi urged.

"What if Jamie – in a very young age – had actually seen a blue door and heard voices coming from behind it? Josef Fritzl, the monster of Amstetten, had his own daughter and three of the children that he had with her imprisoned in his own cellar for 24 years." Reid hesitated. "According to the Talbot's house's ground plan the cellar should be bigger than it is right now…"


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.

"You look very sad", Rossi told Jamie, who was still in hospital, recovering from her severe poisoning.

"I've just been told that the man I loved as my father held his first wife and his daughter captive for more than thirty years in the cellar of the house I grew up in."

"They're free now. And they're taken care of. They won't get out of this unharmed, it's true, but…" Rossi let his voice trail off. The picture of the prematurely aged women with their terribly gray skin and their giant, shocked eyes was too strong for euphemisms.

"I could have put a stop on this! Decades ago! Why didn't I tell Mom? They begged me to help them! Why didn't I…?"

"You can't have been older than three when you accidentally found the blue door. You were much too young to understand. Thankfully Talbot didn't decide to kill you when he discovered that you knew about the door – he only put up another fake wall, hoping you wouldn't remember. It worked quite well for some time, but then Gideon, Ryan and me came along and caused the memory to resurface in your dreams. Fortunately for him you weren't able to interpret the pictures your subconsciousness was creating. This lack of understanding caused your mental problems and sent you on the road – which was fine with him. Nobody believes a lunatic. When that pastor was about to get you back on your feet again, Talbot started stalking you, making sure that you would stay mentally disturbed. Then Morgan found you and insisted on investigating – this was so much of a threat that he finally decided to kill you.""

"If only I had…"

Rossi took Jamie's hand and squeezed it tight. "Stop torturing yourself", he told her empathically. "Without you, Talbot's ex-wife and his daughter would still be caught in that hell-hole. And you didn't only free them, you also freed yourself. The past holds no command over you anymore. The dreams won't come back. Your mother needs you now. Go and help her. Go and live." A single tear ran down Jamie's face, but she nodded.

As Rossi closed the hospital room's door behind himself, Reid came up to him: "You look very sad."

"If I had listened a little more precisely back when we interviewed Jamie, could I have put a stop on this? Could I have ended Talbot's horrendous deeds more than a decade earlier?"

"You didn't know what you were looking at", the young doctor tried to reassure him. "She didn't even have nightmares back then. And besides that, you cannot undo the past. You can only sort out the present."

"Yes", Rossi nodded, smiling bitterly. "How many children and ex-wives do you think are still out there, caught in cellars or other dungeons, waiting for us to find them?"


End file.
